best you ever had
by Kuro49
Summary: Erik/Charles. One day, you make a choice. Before that, there were the good times.


This is me taking the optimism lens and turning it on high. (Still, I am sure there are loads of angsty undertones…) I don't own ;D

XXX

**best you ever had**

XXX

"Professor, what was it like when you were young?"

She is young, she has soul and a battered sadness that seeks for something brighter. Charles refuses to prove her wrong, no matter how many times the world will correct him for it. He is her faith, her last hope.

"It was a different time, Jean."

He says with a smile.

"I was barely a professor then."

000

The tea was cold and there were red Xs all over the page. Rewrite. That single thesis had him hooked by the lips, trailing him wherever it would go. The Oxford days were great that way.

Mondays to Fridays had him running ragged, from libraries to his advisor's office and then several days of writing until his hand cramped up before he would scrap half of it as garbage by the end of the night, and by night, he meant closing it at 5 in the morning. The weekends had him bar hopping, drinking from barrels with no labels and chatting up nice girls with common mutations he could blurt out in his sleep.

He kisses her lips and falls into sheets that doesn't belong to him.

It is lovely and distracting, and just enough for him to hear her thoughts: _what a cute catch_.

He grins.

It was constant and busy and nothing he didn't expect. It could be mundane but he had a certain construction, there were friends and contacts, and a string of one-night stands he could still have a conversation with.

It was also a life he had abandoned in the dead of night when alcohol still spiked his blood.

000

"Her." Jean's mind hones in on a single girl, one with mis-matched eyes, a pretty girl who almost tinges blue beneath the lights. _Who is she?_

His eyes are incredibly soft when he answers.

"I had a sister."

000

She had gold irises when no one was looking. Her blonde hair would flicker from straw yellow to strawberry to a maroon and she would giggle when she could finally get it one color from roots to tips.

They would play in the mansion when it rained outside. Running down hallways of the wings the Xavier family no longer used since a decade ago. He taught her control and she taught him it was okay to admit you had been lonely for all your life.

"Charles, wake up!"

He turns in a groggy state, not quite conscious and just out of reach from sleep, head still throbbing from all the wine he has had last night.

"Don't whine to me when you're late to your own party, _Professor_ Xavier."

At that he sits up straight, eyes a little wider and momentarily pulls her into his arms with a soft muffled laugh.

"Oh Raven, what would I do without you?"

She was his world and he was hers.

When they grew up, they learned to see something beyond that.

000

"And." _Him_.

It all falls away and their canvas is a blank point in the horizon. They can almost hear the sound of an engine, of a used Cadillac that has ran too many miles just crunching up the gravel path to the Westchester Mansion.

And it isn't the Professor who answers, it is Charles, and there is a difference, always.

"His name is Erik."

000

It was static electric.

He met him in the sea and lost him on a beach. But none of that mattered when they sat in that Cadillac in the stifling August heat travelling too far, too fast with the windows rolled down and their shirts plastered to their backs. They had a destination but no route and the journey was always theirs to make. Erik would readjust the rear-view mirror with sleeves rolled up to the elbows and Charles would unbutton his dress shirt until it bordered indecency.

And when he had the perfect amount of collar bone exposed, Erik would lean over, drag an arm around the back of his neck and kiss him everywhere but his lips and start the engine the old fashion way, just to infuriate him some more.

"That went pretty well, I'd say."

Erik thinks Charles doesn't seem to understand the situation. But he understands just fine, he only wants to see the tension ease from Erik's shoulders, the ones with the barest hint of freckles splattered across the skin.

"You think anything went okay as long as nothing blew up in our faces."

Erik scowls and Charles grins in return. The mutant doesn't come back with them.

"Point taken."

Charles was ambitious then, he had hopes and dreams. While none of the ones he truly wanted came true, the asphalt roads were running straight ahead. Erik and him didn't need to think of the consequences. Their mission wasn't clear.

And that ultimate divergence didn't exist, not just yet.

Jean doesn't ever ask again.

XXX Kuro

Charles doesn't actually give Jean entire access (if he does, he better get that birds and bees and more bees talk figured out first.)


End file.
